World Hunger Issues Essay

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There are over eight hundred and sixty two (862) million people worldwide who are chronically hungry today and of this number over 16 million are children. Stories of mothers having to bury their child after dying of hunger have become too common in Africa. A proud, round-faced mother of an infant named Raba has to walk a day's journey to bring her emaciated son to a feeding center; already this mother, who was reluctant to give her name because of the shame of it all, has buried five of her eleven children after they succumbed to the hunger that increasingly grips her land. According to The World Health Organization hunger is the most extreme form of poverty where individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food. Poor nutrition and calorie deficiency cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities . Not only is the lack of food and nutrition the root of the hunger problem, the real root of the issue is the high poverty rate. The issue can most likely be solved if the poverty rate decreases which will in turn better the lives of the people. An increasing number of Africa’s population is starving due to the high poverty rate and drought in the continent and not much is being done to remedy the situation.
Africa has long suffered many droughts over the years; this could be as a result of the continent being situated on the equator. Such dry conditions which have caused droughts have lead to famines. Famines are very catastrophic and account for a majority of hunger related deaths in Africa estimated to be over ten million people in East Africa alone. But famines are also as sporadic as volcanic eruptions and major earthquakes in other areas of the world and, when they (famine) do occur, they are localized to relatively small areas of the broad African continent. Even though famines are occurring more frequent in Africa, the international community has a very slow response to such a disaster. Currently, when a...